Photo(s) on site shows: Parked on the Yangtze river is something that sure looks like a railgun, and a sign that China might have beaten the U.S. Navy in putting this weapon on a ship.

China appears to be the first country to place a electromagnetic railgun on a ship. The weapon was spotted on an old Chinese Navy landing craft in Wuhan and images of it quickly spread across the Internet. If this is true, then China has placed a real railgun on a warship before the U.S. Navy, which has been testing its own railgun on land for years.

Electromagnetic railguns are an entirely new type of weapon system that use electricity and magnetism instead of the energy of a gunpowder explosion. Railguns use electricity to generate very strong electromagnetic fields between two rails. A conductive metal device, called an armature, picks up a projectile and accelerates down the path between the rails, slinging the projectile downrange.

Images of the Yuting I-class amphibious ship Haiyangshan with a large gun turret-like object appeared on social media yesterday morning. The ship, which is a 390-foot tank-landing ship designed to carry up to 10 tanks or 500 tons of cargo, has a wide cargo deck area that is currently is crowded with shipping containers and equipment. Mounted on the bow of Haiyangshan is what clearly looks like a gun turret with a large, stepped barrel.

Large guns mounted on ships would be useful for bombardment missions (*cough* Taiwan *cough*), but China has stuck with 130-millimeter guns for its Navy and appears disinterested in large guns, which is one reason to doubt this is a conventional weapon. Also, this gun is huge but has a stubby barrel, which would limit its range if it were a conventional weapon. Furthermore if, this was an ordinary chemically powered gun, there would be no need for the additional equipment scattered about on the deck of the landing craft.

Conclusion: What we are looking at is an electromagnetic railgun, the same kind that sits on land at a U.S. Navy facility in Virginia, and has since 2012. Here’s the Navy’s railgun slinging multiple hypervelocity rounds in 2017:

Railguns are extremely complex instruments that require immense amounts of power. BAE Systems and the U.S. Navy have been working on railgun technology at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, and fired their first shots in 2010.

The land-based American system can accelerate a 23 pound metal projectile to 4,500 miles an hour, and the Navy’s goal is an effective range of more than 100 miles. To achieve this feat, the railgun requires 25 megawatts of power per shot, enough to power 19,000 homes.

China’s railgun weapon and the Haiyangshan are currently parked on the Yangtze at the Wuchang Shipyards in Wuhan, China. Although this location lies more than a hundred miles inland, the Yangtze is navigable by seagoing vessels for up to a thousand miles. Far from the heavily watched shipyards on the coastline, Wuchang is a good place to quietly conduct shipboard trials of a new weapon system on an actual ship. That is, until the trials attract attention from curious ship spotters with access to social media.

Railguns have the potential to revolutionize warfare. Faster than missiles and longer ranged than conventional guns, railguns could shoot enemy airplanes, anti-ship missiles, and ballistic missiles out of the sky, skewer enemy warships, and bombard targets on land. One weapon could fulfill many roles.

China thought to have been working on a railgun system for years but nobody outside of the intelligence community knew the extent of progress Beijing has made. Even with these photos we still know very little: Is this the first railgun, or the tenth? How much power does it require? Has it been fired before?

Assuming this is China’s first railgun, it could be argued that mounting it on a ship steals a march on the U.S. Navy. Then again, we know the U.S. Navy's weapon works and has worked for years. China's is probably not an operational weapon system, so for now it doesn’t really matter if it’s on a ship or not. We don’t know if China is ahead of America in the railgun game, but one thing is for sure: America’s lead in railgun tech is not as far forward as everyone thought it was.

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O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

. A Chinese ship has been spotted with a large gun on its bow that may be a rail gun.

. If it is a railgun it will be the first time such a weapon has been successfully installed on a ship.

. The US is scaling back its rail gun program while China is focusing on developing electromagnetic technology for its military.

Photos have been circulating on social media that show a Chinese ship with what could be a prototype railgun on its bow.

The photos, taken at the Wuchang Shipyard in China's Hubei Province, show a Type 072III-class landing ship identified as the Haiyang Shan with a much larger gun on its mount than its usual twin 37mm cannon.

The size and shape of the weapon are roughly the same as the US Navy's own prototype rail gun, and the shipping containers on the deck could be used as control rooms or to house the power supply. Moreover, the location of the photographs may hint as to the gun's true nature — the Wuchang Shipyard has been the sight of previous tests for the Chinese Navy.

It also comes at a time when the US has been scaling back their efforts on developing railguns and other electromagnetic technologies. The Navy has spent more than $500 million on the project, which will likely never see combat.

Officials at the Department of Defense "don't want to fund the railgun because they're simply not buying it," a senior legislative official with direct knowledge of the US' railgun project recently told Task & Purpose.

"Promising technologies fall into the 'valley of death' all the time," another legislative source told Task & Purpose. "Testing is great, but unless you want to put money into transitioning that tech into an actual weapons system then what the hell are you doing? We're afraid to take a risk and try to get things moving."

Railguns are cannons that can shoot inert projectiles without gunpowder. They achieve this by using magnetic energy sent through rails on the projectiles as they make their way down the barrel, allowing the projectile to reach hypersonic speeds.

The technology would allow for faster target acquisition, increased range, and could free up space for more projectiles because propelling charges would not be needed — something that may also make the railgun cheaper than its current counterparts.

The photos suggest that the set up is still in a testing phase. A Type 072III-class landing ship would be a good candidate; the ship can hold 500 tons of cargo, and has enough open space to fit large components.

China's military has a well known history of being interested in electromagnetic technologies. The country has been researching how to build and deploy a Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) for its aircraft carriers.

EMALS would require less maintenance that current systems, which rely on compressed steam to launch aircraft, and could allow Chinese aircraft carriers to carry and launch larger aircraft, increasing the range and strike power of a Chinese carrier force.

Railguns are something that China has been pursuing for decades. While the research has been going on since the 1980's, China has recently claimed to have made massive progress on the program, with Rear Admiral Ma Weiming boasting of China's breakthroughs last October.

Though there has been no official confirmation that the pictures show a railgun, China would be the first nation to successfully install a railgun prototype onto a sea-worthy vessel if the reports are true.

__________________
Boats

O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.